Payton and Brees, стр. 77
“I hear myself out on the practice field with all the coaching points that I heard instilled in me in those two years there, the ways to try to motivate the guys, or trying to paint the picture to the guys that I learned from Coach [Payton],” Brady said. “The system isn’t broke, and it’s been working for so long at the NFL level that it’s exciting to me to be able to take Coach Payton’s system and bring it to the college level.”
When veteran passing game coordinator Jerry Sullivan retired from the LSU staff in 2019, LSU head coach Ed Orgeron targeted Brady, who had impressed the Tigers staff during a presentation he made with Carmichael the previous summer. It was essentially a one-man search. Orgeron served as the defensive line coach on Payton’s staff in 2008 and had always wanted to adopt his offensive scheme as a head coach. He hired Brady to install the Saints’ state-of-the-art passing attack and overhaul LSU’s antiquated offensive approach.
Almost overnight, LSU’s offense transformed from jugger-not to juggernaut. The Tigers vaulted from 69th nationally in total offense to first; from 65th in pass efficiency to second; from 67th in passing offense to second; and from 38th in scoring offense to first. And with Brady’s guidance, Burrow went from a preseason third-team All-SEC selection to the Heisman Trophy winner.
Brady’s astonishing work during his one season as LSU’s passing game coordinator might be the best greatest validation yet of Payton’s offensive system.
“He was in our meetings every day,” Brees said of Brady. “We had a great rapport, and he did a great job for us. I felt like he had a great understanding of the Xs and Os of what we were doing but also just his background with a lot of the RPOs, the stuff that you see in LSU’s offense. That’s a real prevalent part of what a lot of teams do. You’ve got to have a smart, athletic quarterback that can execute those things and know when to give, know when to keep, know when to find open receivers, and obviously Joe Burrow [did] an excellent job of executing that offense.”
Payton called LSU’s season “historic” and said he “absolutely” could see the Saints’ offensive influence when he watched the Tigers operate. Sometimes, he joked that he would see Saints plays appear in the LSU offense “a week or two after one of our games.”
Payton’s fingerprints were all over the LSU offense. The Tigers operated almost exclusively out of three- and four-receiver sets, and Brady empowered Burrow to make pre-snap reads and checks at the line of scrimmage. In addition to his No. 9 jersey number, Burrow was Brees-like in his execution. He completed 76.3 percent of his passes and threw touchdown passes to eight different receivers. Running backs combined to catch 80 passes. Tight end Thaddeus Moss caught more passes (47) than his predecessor, Foster Moreau, did the previous two seasons combined.
“When I watch the LSU offense, it is a heavily schemed pro-style route tree that resembles the New Orleans Saints—in terms of how they put defensive coverages and defensive players in conflict,” former NFL safety Matt Bowen told ESPN when asked to compare the LSU and Saints offenses. “And what that requires is for an elite-level quarterback to go through pro progressions, to find the voids in zone coverage and to find the matchups that are created within this offense.
“You can watch those route concepts, there’s a bunch of high-lows, there’s a bunch of flood, there’s a bunch of three-level stuff. It is leveled reads for the quarterback that require him to process information quickly, to throw on time and to anticipate where the windows are gonna be. You don’t see that a lot in college.”
With the heady Burrow at the controls, LSU rewrote the program, Southeastern Conference, and NCAA record books. Burrow was the first quarterback in SEC history to throw for 5,000 yards and 50 touchdowns in a season. His 5,671 passing yards and 60 touchdown passes shattered the league’s single-season records. LSU also became the first school since 2010 to have a 5,000-yard passer, a 1,000-yard rusher, and two 1,000-yard receivers on the same team. All this at a school that failed to rank in the top 100 nationally in passing offense from 2014 to 2016 and had had only one quarterback (JaMarcus Russell, 2007) taken in the first three rounds of the previous 29 NFL Drafts.
“That’s basically what we do,” Burrow said of the Saints offense. “We do a lot of the same stuff with Coach Joe coming from [New Orleans]. It’s getting five guys on a route every play and making them defend every single person. Anybody can get the ball on any play. We’re not designing plays to go to this one guy. We have progression reads that everyone can get the ball on, so you have to be on your toes as a defense and really understand who has each individual player, otherwise we’ll beat you, or I’ll find a guy, and that’s what makes it so difficult to defend. You’ve got to find your guy, and we make it difficult to do it and change up people’s eyes with motions and moving different guys around from the slot to the backfield to outside. We do a really good job of finding matchups that are favorable for us.”
After LSU’s historic season, Brady cashed in. He won the Broyles Award, given annually to the top assistant coach in college football, and was hired by Matt Rhule to be the offensive coordinator of the Carolina Panthers, making him, at 30, the youngest offensive coordinator in the NFL.
LSU isn’t the only school enjoying success with the Saints offense. The Ball State Cardinals, coached by former Saints scout and quarterback coach Mike Neu, led the Mid-American Conference